Prevention Of Sports Injuries – A Study To Inform Health Promotion

Impact of Sports Injuries on Athletes

There are numerous number of examples in different sports from different generations to show that how sports talents have flourished due to lack of injuries and also how curtains have fallen on the careers of number of extra-ordinary sorting talents due to the injuries that they sustained during playing

Prevention of sports injuries- a study to inform health promotion

The modern day sports is extremely demanding on the body of a sport person. With the innovation and technology it has become possible to measure the impact of physical exertion on the body of a sports person for the hectic sporting activities that the sport person has to undertake. Physical fitness is of utmost importance for the athletes to give their best while playing any particular sport. Staying injury free helps an athlete to achieve extra-ordinary heights in his or her sports discipline (Ivarsson, Johnson, Andersen, Tranaeus, Stenling & Lindwall, 2017).

With the objective of prevention of sport injuries number of research have been conducted and with passage of time and huge improvement in medical science as well as innovative technologies the instances of serious sport injuries have reduced. However, the fact that the sporting activities have become much more competitive and equally taxing on the bodies of sport persons cannot be denied. It is important to understand the various aspects of sporting activities and how these impact a sport person’s body (Weiler, Van Mechelen, Fuller & Verhagen, 2016).   

Prevention of sports injuries and health promotional activity

Prevention of injuries to the sports person in modern sporting environment where competition is at its peak is almost an impossible task. However, with the constant improvement in diet and use of different sporting gears can certainly reduce the extent of injuries to the sports persons. The focus should as much on prevention of sporting injuries as it is on post injury recovery process. Often it has been seen that sports person feel desperate to make a comeback from injuries and does everything required in order to be ready to play again the sports that he or she loves. However, equal dedication on the part of the sports person to be fit and healthy by exercising and dieting on regular basis would be immensely beneficial to keep injuries away while playing.

Impact of sporting personalities on youth:

There are thousands of sports icon from different sports that have inspired people to excel in different fields and careers. The impact of sporting icons are often more inspiring on the youth than any other professionals. Across the world there are many re-known players playing for their countries and serving for themselves. So there are around over lakhs of population around the world categorised under the group who got inspired by the famous sports celebrities and have grown their interest to learn and admire that particular sports. According to our science researches and studies we have found that sports play a vital and good role in developing body fitness and metabolism regulation, hormones secretion, well developed physique, mind strength and courage (Boström, Thulin, Fredriksson, Reese, Rockborn & Hammar, 2016).

Prevention of Sports Injuries and Health Promotion

Sport injuries and consequences:

There have been number of instances where sporting icons have been injured while playing their loved sports. While few have made extra-ordinary comebacks to the sporting scenes many have seen the curtains falling to their illustrated sporting careers. From football to tennis, from rugby to cricket, from golf to badminton, from track and field games to swimming and many other sports, there have been number of examples of grit and determination to comeback from injuries. But there have been equally if not more stories of heartbreaks where the sportspersons have failed to recover from injuries sustained during the games to finally quit their loving sports for ever (Silvers-Granelli, Mandelbaum, Adeniji, Insler, Bizzini, Pohlig & Dvorak, 2015).

In one side the story of Rafael Nadal in Tennis in inspirational as one of greatest tennis players ever to play the sport makes comeback from different injuries in mindboggling fashion. However, it would be hard to imagine what he could have achieved if he would have stayed injure free throughout his career. It can be claimed with almost certainty that if Rafael Nadal would have stayed injury free that he would have won more trophies including grand slams and could very well have seated at the top of men’s tennis with more grand-slams (Australian Open, French Open or Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US open)  than anyone else including the great Roger Federer. Thus, one thing is certain that injuries have definitely influenced the career of Rafael Nadal.  

Similarly, in Football there have been number of instances where footballers had to quit the game due to injuries which they sustained during the games. A major incident happen in a cricket field in recent years where an Australian International Cricketer, Philip Hughes collapsed to the ground subsequent to hit by a cricket ball while batting. In a tragic turn of event the cracker failed to recover from the injury sustained and died in hospital few days after the incident. On 25^th November, 2014 in a Sheffield Shield match Hughes was hit by a bouncer in the neck while he was batting in Sydney Cricket Ground. This caused dissection in vertebral artery further causing subarachnoid haemorrhage resulting in the untimely demise of a youth cricketing prospect (Boström, Thulin, Fredriksson, Reese, Rockborn & Hammar, 2016).            

There are number of such incidents in different sports that have shocked the world. Apart from that numerous sporting injuries have led thousands of bright sporting talents leaving the sports at much early age then they normally would have. Despite the huge improvement in sporting diets and on fitness and exercise regimes for the sportsperson the sporting injuries is very much prevalent in the sporting arena (Bahr, 2016).

Impact of Sporting Personalities on Youth

As already mentioned that it is not possible to completely get rid of sporting injuries as injuries will take place as long as the games are played between humans. However with the immense improvement in medical science and regular development of new theories and improvement in sporting gears it is possible to reduce the sporting injuries to maximum extent. Here are the detailed steps to be taken to reduce the sporting injuries (Drew, Cook & Finch, 2016).

The objective should be to prevent injuries from occurring instead of post injury recovery strategies:

The objective should be to prevent sport injuries and to prevent injuries from occurring it is important to follow the standard procedures by the sports persons playing different sports as well as the organizations hosting different sporting events. Here are the list of procedures to be followed by sports persons as well as the organization holding different sporting events:

Appropriate diet shall be followed: 

The sports men and women must follow appropriate diets to keep their body fit to pay a particular sports. The sporting diets depend on the sport and the physical attributes of different sports persons. Thus, sports men and women must have different diets according to their requirements to improve their physical strengths and ability to play the sports. Appropriate diet would help the sports persons to keep themselves hydrated and adequately stuffed to stay away from injuries (Ekstrand, Waldén & Hägglund, 2016).    

Regulars exercise:

Regular exercise is one of most essential elements that help the sportspersons to stay fit and healthy. In the busy playing schedules often sports person neglect their daily exercise routines. It is important to exercise regularly by the sports men and women to keep fitness at the required level to play the sports at top level and to stay injury free. Staying fit is one of the most essential conditions in order to stay injury free. Thus, sport persons must exercise regularly to stay fit and healthy to perform at the highest level and stay injury free (Baugh, Kroshus, Daneshvar, Filali, Hiscox & Glantz, 2015).        

The athletes must take their pre-work-out routine seriously:

The pre-game workout routine must be taken seriously by the athletes to stay injury free while playing the games. Often due to lack of stretching and other exercises before playing a game the sport persons injure themselves due to lack of agility and flexibility required while playing the game.

Sport Injuries and Consequences

Improved sporting gears and protective gears:

For contact sports such as Rugby, football, boxing, wrestling improvement in sporting gears would be extremely effective in preventing sporting injuries. Even in sports like cricket, tennis and other non-contacting sports injuries can be reduced to a maximum extent by improving the sporting gears (Buchheit & Simpson, 2017). For instance in 1970’s and 1980’s cricketers used to play without any helmet.

As a result there used to be a number of serious injuries to the batsmen while facing fast bowlers. However, subsequent to the invention of helmet for batsmen and even fielder fielding in the short legs and other such positions, the number of serious injuries have reduced significantly. Boxing and rugby have also seen huge improvement in sporting gears to reduce the sporting injuries.

In swimming different suits have been manufactured and developed with the help of technology to improve the speed of swimmers under water as well as to protect their skins from water as they are often under water for practices and competitions (Lowrey, 2015).

Huge improvement in medical science:    

Medical science has improved leaps and bounds and is continuously improved on a regular basis. The sports medicines and other supplements have helped the athletes to stay active for longer times and perform at their best while playing the respective games. With continuous research the scientists are trying to improve the physical and mental attributes of sports persons to reduce the risk of injuries while playing different sports. It is important to note that sports persons a=however does not allow to use performance enhancement drugs thus, medicines and supplements that are legal must be used by the sports persons to keep themselves fit and healthy to stay injury free as much as possible (Giza, Prins & Hovda, 2017). 

Use of technology to track the heart and pulse rate of sport persons while playing the games:

Modern technology have made it possible to track the heart and pulse rate of sports persons while playing active games. As a result it has become possible to track the physical health of the sports persons as well as impact on heart and pulse rates under different situations in a game. The data collected from using such tracking devices would be extremely helpful in providing important information to the scientists and medical practitioners to improve the health and fitness of sports men and women to reduce the risk of injuries while playing relevant sports (Donaldson, Newton, McCrory, White, Davis, Makdissi & Finch, 2016).       

Steps to Be Taken to Reduce Sporting Injuries

Thus, in short the sports persons must comply with the following guidelines to prevent injuries to the maximum extent possible:

Sports persons must always wear head protective helmets, knee caps, elbow caps, a pair of well protected shoes. They must always beware of the ball coming from different directions especially for the job of goal keepers. Sports person may suffer from muscle cramps, random major or minor fractures of bones at different positions of body, head injuries especially for the goal keepers while the ball enters the goal post (Pfister, Pfister, Hagel, Ghali, & Ronksley, 2016).The most important for each and every sports is that they must carry an energy drink so that they can take some rest and have that drink so that the body must not get dehydrated.

Second sports is what common and entertaining is cricket. This is also a world famous game or sport in which few countries across the world participate. This is also a very interesting sports but also involves many accidents and fatal cases (Baugh, Kroshus, Daneshvar, Filali, Hiscox & Glantz, 2015). Some of the precautions are as below:-

Firstly, the batsman has to wear a well-protected helmet with some guards on the facial region. The other players like the wicket – keeper, fielder, bowler, and umpire must always wear the knee guards, elbow guards, etc.

They must always wear a sweat shirt outfit so that the sweat coming out of the body must not get dehydrated or evaporated as they play under an open banquet so can make a player weak and may die due to a sudden stroke caused by the deadly heat of the sun (Donaldson, Newton, McCrory, White, Davis, Makdissi & Finch, 2016).

They must surely have a good and well-defined highly protein food, health drinks and medicines to always keep their body strong.

Some sports may have only minor injuries such as the table tennis, lawn tennis, and other sports. For this we must have our self-care so that we must not waste our ample opportunity by treating those injuries instead we must think of how we can increase our level-spirit and become popular (Houlihan & Malcolm, 2015).

Another sport known as the martial arts, it’s a very famous sports which reduces stress and sharpens the capacity of intelligence and meditation. In this the sports included are- karate, judo, Tai-Kwando, wushu, ninja spins, etc. In this sports the masters are the most experienced but the problem occurs for the beginners, as they mostly suffer from cramps, sudden fractures of bones, muscles spasms or contraction and also severe lumbar pains and spinal displacement also. In this type of sports we must always wear a loose outfit so that we can be comfortable (Finch, Kemp & Clapperton, 2015).

References:

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Baugh, C. M., Kroshus, E., Daneshvar, D. H., Filali, N. A., Hiscox, M. J., & Glantz, L. H. (2015). Concussion management in United States college sports: compliance with National Collegiate Athletic Association concussion policy and areas for improvement. The American journal of sports medicine, 43(1), 47-56.

Boström, A., Thulin, K., Fredriksson, M., Reese, D., Rockborn, P., & Hammar, M. L. (2016). Risk factors for acute and overuse sport injuries in S wedish children 11 to 15 years old: What about resistance training with weights?. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 26(3), 317-323.

Buchheit, M., & Simpson, B. M. (2017). Player-tracking technology: half-full or half-empty glass?. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 12(Suppl 2), S2-35.

Donaldson, A., Newton, J., McCrory, P., White, P., Davis, G., Makdissi, M., & Finch, C. F. (2016). Translating guidelines for the diagnosis and management of sports-related concussion into practice. American journal of lifestyle medicine, 10(2), 120-135.

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Ekstrand, J., Waldén, M., & Hägglund, M. (2016). Hamstring injuries have increased by 4% annually in men’s professional football, since 2001: a 13-year longitudinal analysis of the UEFA Elite Club injury study. Br J Sports Med, 50(12), 731-737.

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Houlihan, B., & Malcolm, D. (Eds.). (2015). Sport and society: a student introduction. Sage.

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